As far as I know, if you are trying to print really large, complex print jobs, more RAM is always good, especially since printer CPUs don't (as far as I know!) have virtual memory. I admit though, I don't know where "enough" becomes "more than you will ever need".

256MB should be "Good enough" for a single person use. Unless your page somehow are ultracomplex and they take more than 200MB in processed size. Where the laser printer will just flat out refuse to process it. Its more for network printing queues these days. If your printer is pausing between pages on a multi-page project. You might need more memory too.

Lasers about 15 years ago only came with 4MB of ram. And then you upgraded. The image format hasn't changed much. But the base ram has 4MB vs 256MB.

I currently have Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4525 DNF multifunction device. If I select to scan the whole A4+ glass at 1200dpi, I get a 9906 x 14022 image (138,9Mpix), which is at 3 bytes per pixel 417MB (decimal) or 397.40MiB (binary). The scanner also tells me that the amount of memory needed is 397.40MB.

I guess 1280MB RAM is good for more than three full pages (3.22 pages), while with 256MB RAM only more than a half of page would fit in (0.64 pages).

But probably there is some compression involved, so this is the worst case scenario. What do laser printers do when they run into the limits? Do they lose the details or refuse to print at all?

Questions:1. Will more memory help the printer to improve the image detail?2. Will more memory help the printer to print it at all?3. Will more memory help the printer to speed up printing - less waiting for rendering?

Lasers about 15 years ago only came with 4MB of ram. And then you upgraded. The image format hasn't changed much. But the base ram has 4MB vs 256MB.

Currently I have a monochrome HP LaserJet 1022 with 8MB RAM (1200 dpi). What I think the host does is to basically generate a TIFF image file, whose size is max 8MB. This also involves some lossy compression to get the page to fit into 8MB.

But a color equivalent would be much more than that (more than 3*8MB=24MB) since color bitmaps are not as compressible as BW images.

Well, I still have an ancient (relatively speaking) Samsung ML-4500 with (I think) 4MB of RAM. Anything more than 3-4 pages of a modern PDF or document it just refuses to print it, or only prints the first page or two.

However, since I don't actually use it very often, on the occasions I need to print a longer document I just print it a few pages at a time. But I imagine its behaviour is pretty similar to what any printer would do when over-matched by a given print job, it's just over-matched more often than most!

Currently I have a monochrome HP LaserJet 1022 with 8MB RAM (1200 dpi). What I think the host does is to basically generate a TIFF image file, whose size is max 8MB. This also involves some lossy compression to get the page to fit into 8MB.

That would be host processing. The 8MB is the buffer to print one page at the maximum size printer will allow. They work similar to Inkjets. They get fed information page by page. The host print driver will only send 8MB files at most to the printer.

And if a regular laser printer runs out of memory it will usually refuse to print. Depends on how the manufacturer deals with it.

So there has to be memory for both the original files (small) and fully rendered image (400MB/page max). I'm having issues with this document in Word (OS runs out of GDI objects ) and get out of memory errors on x64 Word 2010 (GDI objects are still 16-bit, for some reason). I have recently upgraded to x64 Word 2013, but I think the issues are the same, since it's an OS imposed limitation.

There's a 50x100 matrix like this, of EMF pie charts, that fits on 2 A4 pages:

As a general rule, I find Postcript both needs and can use more memory than PCL. It speeds up with more memory under some situations.

It can be worth while to know what kind of memory your printer uses, Xerox uses SODIMM DDR RAM, so a old 128 meg laptop memory may find new life as a Printer memory. (You are never going to put a 128 meg SODIMM in a computer again)

It can be worth while to know what kind of memory your printer uses, Xerox uses SODIMM DDR RAM, so a old 128 meg laptop memory may find new life as a Printer memory. (You are never going to put a 128 meg SODIMM in a computer again)

To report back, I put in a 1GB 200-pin SODIMM DDR2 PC2-6400 (800MHz) memory module for a maximum of 1280MB RAM (256MB internal + 1024MB). I also tried to put in the 2GB DDR2 667MHz SODIMM module from my older laptop, but the printer refused it, displaying "961 Service Memory Error-s". It didn't even start counting (memory testing), as it did with the 1GB module. It's says that 1GB is max supported module size, but it doesn't hurt to try, since sometimes larger memory modules work, even though the specs say otherwise.

I'm pretty satisfied with Lexmark C734dn, the print quality is nice. I have also put it in quiet mode, which is recommended for text and text+graphics. I don't print photos with this printer, but you can set in the driver that a non-quiet faster mode will be used for photos.

The internal designation for this printer series is in 5026. This way I found 5026 service manual - http://www.marketpoint.com/Service_Manuals/5026_sm.pdf . It's always a good read to find service manual for your printer. It's mostly kind of internal, intended only for repair people, but you can find it for your printer with some persistent googling

If you go to Lexmark's official website for the printer ( http://www1.lexmark.com/US/en/catalog/p ... =cat170005 ), they will sell you 1024MB DDR2-DRAM for $859.00. You can get that for 2% of the price elsewhere... For that list price, it's definitely not worth upgrading RAM. But for < $20, it's worth relieving you from the worries that something more complex might not print. As a bonus, it speeds up your printing

List price on printer RAM carries quite possibly the biggest markup on anything outside of McDonald's coffee... and I'm not too sure about the coffee.

Luckily the printers now use standard (usually previous gen) laptop memory. But someone might be duped into buying "original supplies", because their organization mandates it. Well, if that makes the devices less expensive for the rest of us, then let it be!

I currently have Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4525 DNF multifunction device. If I select to scan the whole A4+ glass at 1200dpi, I get a 9906 x 14022 image (138,9Mpix), which is at 3 bytes per pixel 417MB (decimal) or 397.40MiB (binary). The scanner also tells me that the amount of memory needed is 397.40MB.

What you're missing that no-one seems to have mentioned yet is that a laser printer is not 24 bits per dot. Each dot on the page can only be solid black, cyan, magenta, yellow, or white (no toner). With only five possible colors, we're looking at 3 bits per dot max, or a bit under 50MB uncompressed for a full bleed A4 sheet at 1200dpi. Intermediate tones are created by dithering, which works pretty well at such a high print resolution.

With regards to your LaserJet 1022, a full bleed A4 sheet would be 16.6MB monochrome, so there must be image compression going on. Typical prints should be highly compressible (lots of white dots in a row), so the average compressed page image size is probably a pretty small fraction of the uncompressed size. I imagine that if you tried to print a full bleed 1200dpi image of noise, the printer would barf.

You're right that color is typically less compressible, but that mostly refers to photographic color and similar types of images. Business graphics color, like what you're printing, should be highly compressible, similar to most monochrome prints.

What you're missing that no-one seems to have mentioned yet is that a laser printer is not 24 bits per dot. Each dot on the page can only be solid black, cyan, magenta, yellow, or white (no toner). With only five possible colors, we're looking at 3 bits per dot max, or a bit under 50MB uncompressed for a full bleed A4 sheet at 1200dpi. Intermediate tones are created by dithering, which works pretty well at such a high print resolution.

You are probably quite right. Though I don't know if some printers don't adjust the laser power to attract different amounts of toner... But yes, it's not 8 bits per color for a pixel.

You're right that color is typically less compressible, but that mostly refers to photographic color and similar types of images. Business graphics color, like what you're printing, should be highly compressible, similar to most monochrome prints.

This would be the case with host based printing. But if you send a color bitmap image or a lots of vector shapes to a printer via PS3 / PCL XL, then the printer has to both: - store the PS3 / PCL XL instructions - has to have a rendering buffer

The resolution itself for Lexmark color laser printers is 2400dpi x 600dpi, which is then commercially sold as 1200dpi x 1200dpi (24x6==12x12).

With regards to your LaserJet 1022, a full bleed A4 sheet would be 16.6MB monochrome, so there must be image compression going on. Typical prints should be highly compressible (lots of white dots in a row), so the average compressed page image size is probably a pretty small fraction of the uncompressed size. I imagine that if you tried to print a full bleed 1200dpi image of noise, the printer would barf.

It would be interesting to try

I searched the internet for a random image noise generator, but I couldn't find anything that would support 10k x 14k image sizes. Do you have anything handy? Otherwise I'll play with C# and create a simple command line utility to create PNGs of random noise.

We run the stock amount of memory on most of our workgroup printers here, including medium-volume color lasers... IIRC this is only 256MB or 512MB in most, although some now are up to 1GB.

Haven't seen any issues with running out of memory even with complex documents and photos. This is mostly Xeronx Phaer 6350 and later stuff, as well as the HP equivalents.

So more memory is nice, but since you already had 256MB, well, you probably didn't need any more. (now we DID see issues on our older black and white HP Laserjet 4000/4050's, most of those only had 8MB or 32MB or something tiny, another 64MB or whatnot helped significantly)

The Lexmark x792's we have are all outfitted with 1GB RAM. I think they come stock with 256MB, but with that amount are much slower and don't always print complex documents, PDF's or TIFF's. Actually, they kind of choke on TIFF's and PDFs. It also affects the scan-related solutions on the devices.

Back in the bad old days, one of the things I had to convince my boss to do was upgrade the RAM on the HP 5Si's and new(at the time) 8000s, as they were crawling along nowhere near their rated speeds when printing TIFFs. This was bad since that's all they did all day, every day. The RAM pretty much doubled the throughput. We also added RIP modules that offloaded a lot of the processing, which brought them up to their rated engine speed.

From what I've seen, the newer GDI printers benefit more from more RAM, but it seems to be less of a speed issue and more of an ability to handle large spooled documents.

One test that I've found has remained useful over the years is the PDF version of the NYC Subway map. For some reason, they never flatten it before publishing it, and it has a tendency to make low end printers choke, and isn't easy on the bigger ones either.

@JSawyer: If you're interested, try printing that PDF with and without the added RAM and see how long it takes.

Also, make sure that your driver detects the additional RAM. Depending on the version, the configuration tab should have a button to ask the device what it has, which will update the tray and RAM config.

One test that I've found has remained useful over the years is the PDF version of the NYC Subway map. For some reason, they never flatten it before publishing it, and it has a tendency to make low end printers choke, and isn't easy on the bigger ones either.

I have tried printing the map on my Laserjet 1022 (GDI), and the spool file size is 4.39MB, which is well within the 8MB of its memory. The printer was using the best "ProRes 1200" resolution. There wasn't any special delay.

Also, make sure that your driver detects the additional RAM. Depending on the version, the configuration tab should have a button to ask the device what it has, which will update the tray and RAM config.

The amount of memory and MHz speed are the first two things that get displayed on the printer's LCD screen. The same is stated on printer's web interface.

Under driver's Install Options | Ask Printer, RAM isn't a special "option". It's duplexing, bigger tray, hard disk and a flash memory card. I have installed the latest FW and drivers (both PS3 and PCL), so RAM management must be automatic.